What If (If Only.... #2)(35)

I turn the water on hot and at full spray, busying myself with anything but looking back to where she sits alone, flipping a card around in her fingers.

Of course it’s a diversion. It’s all a f*cking diversion, the only way to prolong the inevitable, to avoid living a life that’s not mine.

With the water on high and the steam in my face, I don’t notice her leave the couch until she’s standing beside me.

She turns off the water and pulls my wet hands to hers, drying them with the towel on the counter.

“I was out of line. I’m sorry. I just, I have a hard time watching other people make harmful decisions, physically harmful decisions to a body…and a mind…that’s perfectly healthy.”

“I don’t understand,” I say. “I’ve had a few slipups here and there, but you accuse me of something I don’t have—choice.”

“I’m sorry,” she says again. “It’s me, and you didn’t deserve that. I have no right unloading my baggage on you. I’m not looking to scare you off…yet.” The corners of her mouth attempt to turn up, but the smile never really comes. She reaches into her back pocket and takes out a card, placing it in my now dry palm.

WILD.

“One question?” I ask, already knowing what it will be.

She nods.

“Can I kiss you?”

“Please.”

So I do.

Deflect.





Chapter Twelve


Maggie


I wake to the sound of running water. My eyes fight to adjust to the darkness, the lack of visual confirmation adding to my disorientation.

My phone. I need my phone.

On instinct I check the unfamiliar bedside table next to me, and it’s there—plugged in and charged. The time reads eleven-thirty-two, the day still Saturday, and as my eyes find their way in the darkness, I recognize the space because I’ve been here before—Griffin’s room.

I remember the WILD card and the kiss and then…blank.

Griffin emerges from the bathroom, towel drying his hair and shirtless while sporting a pair of flannel pants. For a second I forget my confusion and admire the view while he doesn’t notice me looking.

“You’re up,” he says, his face still obscured by the towel, and I gasp at being found out. “I thought you were gone for the night.”

He drops the towel to show his face, an affectionate grin accompanying a weariness in his eyes, though I’m pretty sure he didn’t do anything too taxing today.

“When did I…fall asleep?” I bank on the normalcy of one falling asleep without remembering when or how. It happens to the best of us when we’re exhausted, though normal I am not. “It wasn’t when we were…”

I don’t want to finish the question because if the answer is yes, then I’m the worst.

His radiant smile brightens his eyes, lit only by the escaping light from the bathroom doorway. “No. It wasn’t when we did a terrible job of cleaning the dishes, or an even worse job of kicking the Uno deck to the floor once we got back to the couch. It was…”

“I fell asleep on your chest!” I interrupt with delight, the memory starting fuzzy, but the edges quickly solidify. I remember our kiss beginning in the kitchen, soft and unsure after the shitty things I said to him. Then the couch, his continued kisses, soft and gentle, telling me what I said hadn’t ruined the evening.

Then total and utter exhaustion. I forgot, but it wasn’t permanent. Somehow with Griffin, memories return.

He sits on the edge of the bed next to me. “I hope it’s okay. I walked you in here so you’d be more comfortable. You didn’t want me to take you home.”

I sit up, suddenly aware of what the time means.

“I missed the last bus.”

He brushes my hair, wild from sleep, out of my face and behind my ear.

“I can take you home whenever you need,” he says, and I shake my head. The thought of him in my apartment, of him seeing who I really am—that’s when whatever this is will be over. Because he has no idea what he’s really getting himself into with me, and the longer I can keep him from seeing, the longer we can pretend that none of it matters. That nothing outside of what we let each other see exists.

“Or, you could stay. It’s late. You’re wiped out.”

He grabs a book from the nightstand, A Storm of Swords, book three in George R.R. Martin’s Game of Thrones series. He wasn’t kidding.

“I have some reading to do, so your snoring won’t bother me.”

“I don’t snore!” I slap him lightly on his stomach, and a flash of heat runs through me. Independent of thought, my hand walks up his torso to the healing wound on his chest. For a second I go blank but then brush it off as sense memory kicks in. My hands have been here before, and their recollection picks up the slack of my own.

I press my eyes closed, giving myself a beat to collect my thoughts, trying not to read into this momentary lapse.

“Your fence attack is healing.”

He smiles, placing his palm over my hand so it lies flat against his skin.

“Skin-deep shit heals quickly.”

I know, I want to tell him. But I say nothing, letting the thought linger for only a second before I push it away, before my eyelids grow heavy with sleep again.